文档介绍：Introduction
What do normal dreaming, the visions induced by psychedelic drugs, and
the psychoses of mental illness have mon? One often hears the
simple answer ‘‘chemical imbalance’’ without further explanation. But
by now, we have advanced our knowledge of how the chemistry of the
brain balances while we are awake and how that balance shifts when we
fall asleep and dream to the point of providing the basis of a unified
theory. With it, we can begin to explain, in much more specific terms,
the chemical imbalances caused by psychedelic drugs, or those chemical
imbalances that may cause depression and schizophrenia. From the same
knowledge base we can also begin to understand how and why the drugs
that doctors prescribe to correct imbalances restore the natural equilib-
rium of the brain.
x Introduction
The Dream Drugstore details the chemical balance concept in terms
of what we know about the regulation of normal states of consciousness
over the course of the day by the shifting balance of brain chemicals called
neuromodulators. Neuromodulators have been the focus of sleep and
dream research for the past 25 years. Using this knowledge as a lens
through which to view the results of the psychedelic experiments of the
1960s and the descriptions of careful self observers before and since, we
find striking confirmation that every drug that has potent transformative
effects on consciousness interacts with the brain’s own consciousness-
altering chemicals.
Moreover, when we review the chemical theories of mental illness, we
find further confirmation of the neuromodulatory imbalance-balance hy-
pothesis and, in many cases, we can specify the mechanisms of pathologi-
cal dysfunction in terms of what we know about normal functions.
Because of the difficulties of studying human brain chemistry directly
much of our theorizing is necessarily conjectural and plete, but the
recent development of brain imaging techniques, which have revolution-
ized sleep a